Gilroy
– From a tiny room encased in stainless steel, Roger Zaucha
conducts a fire, controlling the quantities of smoke, the height of
the flames. It’s a test for Gilroy’s firefighters, one that Zaucha
is writing in soot and smoke.
Gilroy – From a tiny room encased in stainless steel, Roger Zaucha conducts a fire, controlling the quantities of smoke, the height of the flames. It’s a test for Gilroy’s firefighters, one that Zaucha is writing in soot and smoke.
“I’m making them work for it,” said instructor Zaucha, a retired fire chief from Auburn, seated in the control room of the Northtree Fire International burn trailer, which simulates large fires for firefighters to quell. A small, barred window gives him a view of the firefighters spraying the flames. Zaucha didn’t turn off the burner until one firefighter drew closer, turning the water directly onto the blaze. “Up close and personal – good.” Zaucha watched another few seconds, then warned Division Chief Phil King, “He’s going to blow my pilot light out.”
From Thursday to Saturday, Gilroy firefighters practiced outside Chestnut Fire Station in Northtree’s trailer, a training tool that rolls from city to city across the West. With few structure fires – usually only one a month – the department needs the trailer for hands-on practice, said Gilroy Fire Chief Dale Foster. So do South Santa Clara County firefighters, and those from United Technologies Corporation, an international conglomerate, of which a subsidiary called UTC Fire & Security Protection Services has operations, which shared the drill with Gilroy Fire. The department paid more than $12,000 to host the trailer for all three days, and Foster said the expense is well worth it.
“It’s the closest thing we can get to a real structure fire,” said Foster, “but it’s controlled, it’s safe and it’s environmentally friendly … Newer folks in the department haven’t experienced this before, and the rest is reinforcement. Something’s new for everybody.”
Different scenarios test firefighters’ skills: A broken hydrant. A deep-set lot that tests the length of engine’s hoses. A firefighter down. From outside the trailer, division chiefs direct the crews, spinning a story to match each 10- to 30-minute drill. Inside, a massive propane tank fuels the fire, while carbon dioxide and mineral oil produce non-toxic smoke. The trailer’s setup mimics a two-story home, with burners located in a stove and fireplace downstairs and in a metal bed upstairs. A roof trapdoor can be “sawed” out by crews to ventilate the trailer.
Unlike a real fire, firefighters are safe from surprise hazards such as ammunition or explosive chemicals. One firefighter stands next to a door, equipped with a safety button to halt the drill in case of emergency – real emergency. Injuries are rare, said Zaucha, who estimated the drill’s injury rate at less than 1 percent.
“If you burn an old building down, it’s dangerous,” said Bill Vandevort, Northtree’s chief of administration, “and you can only practice so many times before the structural integrity of the building really suffers. In our unit, we can do four fires in an hour.” Vandevort estimated that Northtree’s trailer has served 80 clients every year for the past eight years. The only thing the company has had to replace on the trailer are fire-damaged props.
“Here, everything is controlled,” said King. “There’s no danger that the roof will collapse, or that something will explode.”
But the flames aren’t fake, as the soot-blackened interior of the trailer reveals: In the steel trailer, temperatures can climb to 1,000 degrees, forcing firefighters to crawl on the cooler ground. Flames can even “flashover,” rolling across the ceiling from one room to the next.
“When it gets that hot,” said King, “it can melt your helmet.”
Before the crews took on the trailer, division chief Ed Bozzo advised them to take the training seriously, and to visualize a real home as much as possible. Fourteen firefighters sat on folding chairs in the station’s garage, listening.
“Get the experience you need now,” said Bozzo, “to have confidence when it’s the real thing.”
“Practice makes perfect is B.S.,” added King. “If you practice doing it wrong, you don’t learn anything.”
The drills tested division chiefs too, pushing the different agencies to communicate clearly and quickly under pressure. A new county policy has standardized signal words and devices after the 2005 death of Santa Clara County Fire Captain Mark McCormack, killed by a live electrical wire during a four-alarm fire in Los Gatos. Foster said the division chiefs incorporated the new policy into the training, using common language to identify and contain electrical hazards.
As firefighters climbed a metal stairwell, satisfied that the downstairs flames were dead, Zaucha revived the fire from the control room. Re-ignited, flames licked the underside of the stairs, as firefighters tried to spray downward at the blaze.
“It’s a crummy environment in there,” said Zaucha, watching the crews at work, “but that’s exactly what we want them to get used to.”